Firestorm PBR Release Is Out

[AmeliaJ08]

12 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I have a rather old computer. It was smoking hot when I bought it five years ago, but five years is a long time in the tech world. It's not a potato as yet, but it won't be long and it will meet the mashed potato test. lol

My stats:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz (3600 MHz)
Memory: 16228 MB (Used: 1755 MB)
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4529)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 11027 MB

I had enough issues with the FS Beta PBR viewer that I uninstalled it and went back to the regular release some time ago. But I was surprised just how well the current release ran on my computer yesterday. I have always used the limit FPS on my viewer because I run all the bells and whistles. I have my graphics set to one step down from ultra.  

So for testing yesterday, I unchecked the limit framerate box. Standing at home on my deck looking out to sea my fps hovers between 180 and 200. When I turn and look toward my neighbors the fps drops momentarily and then stabilizes around 80-90. Yesterday while at the birthday, standing in a crowd at a music event my fps didn't ever drop below 40. Now I'm going to have to test that against the LL viewer at the birthday.

I've been switching between LL and FS viewer for months now when I wanted to use a PBR enabled viewer. Before this release the LL viewer smoked the beta test FS PBR viewer. Honestly, there are a few, very few, features in the FS viewer that still keep me preferring it over the LL viewer, but if FS went away tomorrow, I'd be just fine on the LL viewer. But I would sorely miss my area search, derender objects, and favorite wearables box. 

Edit: I forgot to also add that my fans didn't work any harder using this new release either. My temps hover around 50c typically and that didn't change.

2080Ti is still a pretty monstrous GPU. You should be good for years with it, I was testing a 2080 Super and it's still more than adequate as well, you can even crank the settings very high on a 1080Ti.

 

 

 

[Annie Evergreen]

3 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

If it is a laptop this is a good sign it needs a clean. You should probably open most laptops every 6 months for cleaning, the heatsinks are very fine and clog up with dust very quickly. The fans also have super fine blades and really don't cope with much dust buildup at all.

It's one of those things manufacturers never mention but gaming laptops always come to me absolutely clogged with dust since people don't open them and clean heatsinks themselves.

It's a desktop, not a laptop. It gets cleaned out every 3 to 4 months. Not everyone neglects routine cleaning.

[KellyMorris]

4 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Nobody can explain whatever is going on with your hardware but what you are saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

There's no huge difference between 144fps in Firestorm and 144fps in Cyberpunk. If anything Cyberpunk should be making more noise and heat given it tends to max out CPU and GPU in a way that SL could only dream of, you tend to see quite low CPU utilization in SL now.

There's a good argument for limiting framerate in SL though: it's not worth it beyond 60fps, arguably it isn't worth it beyond 30. The simulator itself only works at 55fps, there's basically no time you'd ever feel any benefit from a higher frame rate like in twitch FPS games etc. I'm not even sure animations are made to benefit from high frame rates, it certainly doesn't feel any smoother beyond 60fps so if you had a high refresh monitor you could probably happily set the frame limiter to half its max refresh and not notice.

 

All a no sense, 21 year old game with PBR add on vs a project already born and built with PBR . Fps of sl simulator are 45 on official second like wiki.

You read my FPS but you don't read I point of the temp as problem, GPU and CPU because is not only the % of the cpu utilizaion to make it hotter but the fact is single thread, when a program is bad optimized the whole system is run hot and your fans spin really fast for save your hardware, this is the case.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, KellyMorris said:

All a no sense, 21 year old game with PBR add on vs a project already born and built with PBR . Fps of sl simulator are 45 on official second like wiki.

You read my FPS but you don't read I point of the temp as problem, GPU and CPU because is not only the % of the cpu utilizaion to make it hotter but the fact is single thread, when a program is bad optimized the whole system is run hot and your fans spin really fast for save your hardware, this is the case.

Firestorm is not single threaded. As for the rest of that rambling nonsense: clean your computer if it's running hot. Firestorm is not working a GPU and CPU harder than something like Cyberpunk, it is doing significantly less work.

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

3 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

I have a rather old computer. It was smoking hot when I bought it five years ago, but five years is a long time in the tech world. It's not a potato as yet, but it won't be long and it will meet the mashed potato test. lol

My stats:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz (3600 MHz)
Memory: 16228 MB (Used: 1755 MB)
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4529)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 11027 MB

I had enough issues with the FS Beta PBR viewer that I uninstalled it and went back to the regular release some time ago. But I was surprised just how well the current release ran on my computer yesterday. I have always used the limit FPS on my viewer because I run all the bells and whistles. I have my graphics set to one step down from ultra.  

So for testing yesterday, I unchecked the limit framerate box. Standing at home on my deck looking out to sea my fps hovers between 180 and 200. When I turn and look toward my neighbors the fps drops momentarily and then stabilizes around 80-90. Yesterday while at the birthday, standing in a crowd at a music event my fps didn't ever drop below 40. Now I'm going to have to test that against the LL viewer at the birthday.

I've been switching between LL and FS viewer for months now when I wanted to use a PBR enabled viewer. Before this release the LL viewer smoked the beta test FS PBR viewer. Honestly, there are a few, very few, features in the FS viewer that still keep me preferring it over the LL viewer, but if FS went away tomorrow, I'd be just fine on the LL viewer. But I would sorely miss my area search, derender objects, and favorite wearables box. 

Edit: I forgot to also add that my fans didn't work any harder using this new release either. My temps hover around 50c typically and that didn't change.

This is really good to see. I have my Max Complexity set higher, but almost everything else identical, including draw distance and Quality and Speed exactly yours. I may try. Fingers crossed.

[Rosemary McDonnell]

I'm on a Late 2015 iMac with graphics set to high and had absolutely no issues. Everything loaded fast and displayed well. The iMac was operating as it normally does and was not under any strain. Fascinated to finally see PBR.

[Jaylinbridges]

7 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I think all that has happened is Firestorm reports avatar height the same as the official viewer now. Weird change to make for the release version though, the betas did not do this.

I tested the SLViewer, the 7.18 Beta FS, and all the 7.19.74xxx FS Betas plus the new FS PBR release and the old FS 6.6.17.7.70368 Release, which is the last of the non PBR FS versions.

Used same avatar and outfit and location for all tests

SL Viewer read 6.41 ft.   6.6.17.7 old FS Release read 7.05 ft.  quite a difference.

But the height decreased with older FS Betas too.  7.18.74xxx I was 6.92 ft., and all the 7.19.74xxx i was 6.67 feet.

Beq is looking into what changed.

 

Edited June 23 by Jaylinbridges

[Katherine Heartsong]

Okay, I have upgraded to the latest FS on the advice of my tenant and generally favourable notes and advice here.

Had to turn exposure down to 0.6 because even 1.0 was too bright. Fans kicked in hard but I cracked well over 100fps in my home and then my test skybox, and have it limited to 41 now (can not seem to get it to get to 40 ... either 38 or 41, stupid slider).

Restarting to see what happens to the fans now that the FPS is limited right from get go. Then I'll hit a few stores and events to see what's what and report back.

Turned off mirrors, crowded places like Warehouse 21 good fps, so dim there had to run on the new mid-day, probably use the EEP that the amazing @Rowan Amore shared with me as default when the local EEP is dark.

Edited June 23 by Katherine Heartsong

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I tested the SLViewer, the 7.18 Beta FS, and all the 7.19.74xxx FS Betas plus the new FS PBR release and the old FS 6.6.17.7.70368 Release, which is the last of the non PBR FS versions.

Used same avatar and outfit and location for all tests

SL Viewer read 6.41 ft.   6.6.17.7 old FS Release read 7.05 ft.  quite a difference.

But the height decreased with older FS Betas too.  7.18.74xxx I was 6.92 ft., and all the 7.19.74xxx i was 6.67 feet.

Beq is looking into what changed.

 

Interesting, I was a little behind on my betas and was using build 73873 where height was being reported normally.

[Rick Nightingale]

2 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

can not seem to get it to get to 40 ... either 38 or 41, stupid slider

Things like that bug me... Here's how to set it should you want to:

1. With firestorm not running:
2. Open a file explorer and paste %appdata%\Firestorm_x64\user_settings into the location bar; that will actually take you to C:\Users\your_windows_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64\user_settings
3. Open the file settings.xml in notepad or a text editor.
4. Search for the key: FramePerSecondLimit using find, it's about 2/3 down the file.
5. A few lines under that you'll see <real>xx</real> where xx is your frame limit.
6. Change the xx to what you want.
7. Save the file, start Firestorm, enjoy defeating the stupid slider!

 

Edited June 23 by Rick Nightingale

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I feel like this has been asked a zillion times but I can't find the answers because there's been so many threads. I have my parcel set to region settings and it's making a lot of greenery and other things look fairly dark. I think i need to adjust the contrast in the region settings? Which would be where?

 

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I feel like this has been asked a zillion times but I can't find the answers because there's been so many threads. I have my parcel set to region settings and it's making a lot of greenery and other things look fairly dark. I think i need to adjust the contrast in the region settings? Which would be where?

Try the exposure slider in general of graphics or a different eep.

[Siyun Jeon]

Frankly, I'm getting nuts right now on my not-so-new machine and can't really see why. I have an i7-6700 at 4 GHz, 32 Gig Ram, and two GTX 1080 (of which of course mostly one is used by modern or not so modern games). I get yucky CPU (not GPU) spikes every 6 seconds, where the otherwise 30-40% CPU time goes up to 100 for half a second, and back down. That of course drives my fan up to max for a second or two, and in turn drives me crazy. 

I've limited frame rate to 20, 64m radius, no shadows, no screen reflections. Doesn't make a difference, so I doubt it's even the graphics that are driving this, but something else is happening on the CPU with that update. Unfortunately I don't have a clue what yet.

Best

Siyun

Edited June 23 by Siyun Jeon

[Rick Nightingale]

22 minutes ago, Siyun Jeon said:

I get yucky CPU (not GPU) spikes every 6 seconds

I have a GTX 1080 on a lower spec overall PC; I don't see anything like that and didn't on any of the betas.

First thing that occurs... did you whitelist all the viewer files in your antivirus? It might be something like that going on.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/antivirus_whitelisting

I'm right now running two instances of the viewer on that PC, with an alt logged in on one of them for some testing, and although I have high CPU and memory use, there is no unexpected spiking or anything like that here. Edit to add: Also running Photoshop, XnViewMP, and this browser at the same time, all on 4 cores and 16GB RAM.

Edited June 23 by Rick Nightingale

[Toothless Draegonne]

15 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It is a safety precaution but a little overrated imo after cleaning plenty of machines over the years. Maybe just best to wear rubber soled footwear and don't do it in a carpeted room?

Canned air is not strong enough for heavily dusted components and I typically use an air compressor at 50-60 psi and use the equivalent of 5-6 cans of air to really clean a desktop. Even then as the case for that Nvidia card, it wasn't enough because of the way it was designed it would just push the dust to the air flow outlets and get stuck there. The only real solution was to remove the card and dissemble it and hope the heatsinks don't need new paste on them. 

My partner had an AMD card she had to freshen the paste on every 6 months to a year when she owned it.

The reason canned air is low pressure is because you can easily blow blades off of fans. If you have dust that tightly packed into your system, you may be better off removing the worst of it with a soft brush first, before finishing off with an air gun that is much lower than 50-60psi.

Another thing to try is re-pasting with a long life thermal compound such as Kryonaut, and putting new thermal pads in, however that is a much more involved and scary process. Still, these are all maintenance steps that should be done regardless of what you use the computer for, and whether you even use SL or not.

[Vivienne Schell]

48 minutes ago, Siyun Jeon said:

Frankly, I'm getting nuts right now on my not-so-new machine and can't really see why. I have an i7-6700 at 4 GHz, 32 Gig Ram, and two GTX 1080 (of which of course mostly one is used by modern or not so modern games). I get yucky CPU (not GPU) spikes every 6 seconds, where the otherwise 30-40% CPU time goes up to 100 for half a second, and back down. That of course drives my fan up to max for a second or two, and in turn drives me crazy. 

I've limited frame rate to 20, 64m radius, no shadows, no screen reflections. Doesn't make a difference, so I doubt it's even the graphics that are driving this, but something else is happening on the CPU with that update. Unfortunately I don't have a clue what yet.

Best

Siyun

If you can, run a system monitoring app. I ran the one provided by Nvidia. Regardless which settings (even lowest), the GPU workload is average 50 percent, and spikes at 90 percent for a couple of seconds (RTX 3070). Not even the latest AAA games do that to a GPU. CPU average workload is like 30 percent, which is high, but still reasonable, but also the CPU workload spikes up tp 99 percent (for a second, like after a TP). You are right, and don´t get fooled by the gaslighters and FS cheer crowd. This viewer is borked and needs a lot of work to become usable.

[Toothless Draegonne]

32 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

If you can, run a system monitoring app. I ran the one provided by Nvidia. Regardless which settings (even lowest), the GPU workload is average 50 percent, and spikes at 90 percent for a couple of seconds (RTX 3070). Not even the latest AAA games do that to a GPU. CPU average workload is like 30 percent, which is high, but still reasonable, but also the CPU workload spikes up tp 99 percent (for a second, like after a TP). You are right, and don´t get fooled by the gaslighters and FS cheer crowd. This viewer is borked and needs a lot of work to become usable.

If you are running 30% util on any game or other workload, then it is simply not a demanding workload, or you have used options to drop the amount of work your GPU has to do.

My laptop with a 3070ti, frame limited to 60fps, will only go over about 40-50% util, running ultra detail levels. It will go higher if I run it on the 4K monitor, but that is to be expected regardless of viewer.

Like it or not, SL is a platform with vast amounts of user generated content, some good, some bad, some abhorrently terrible. As for "the latest AAA games", see attached image and enjoy. That's what "the latest AAA games" do when you tell them to actually use your GPU and don't turn some graphical options off. Do that with your viewer, and you will also see GPU utilisation drop.

 

[Siyun Jeon]

Well, I'm not worried about what the GPU does, I'm worried about what the CPU does. I don't want to dig into the code to hunt down what firestorm is doing like every 6 seconds (it's definietly the firestorm exe causing those load spikes). And it's no the antivirus, it's whitelisted, and not even temporarily switching off realtime protection has any effect whatsoever.  The spikes also appear when I'm just standing still, and of course everything vanishes and goes silent once the client is lowered. 

Of course, if it's multithreaded now and wasn't before, then that would explain why it even can do those CPU spikes now and couldn't do them before at all. I still see others that have a similar setup and don't see the problem, so I'm still interested in what culd be the cause.

Edited June 24 by Siyun Jeon

[SylviElle Zaftig]

Update after first rejection of the update....

 - Turning down Exposure to .5 made Nam's Optimal Skin and Prim bearable BUT changing it to Midday (legacy) was a TONNNNNN better. Still bright but not migraine inducing. I hope FS or LL makes it so Exposure is DEFAULT at the lowest.

 - These are my settings https://gyazo.com/89a5cb682ebcc48c50feea67a2bb94ce I don't throttle my FPS.

 - These are my specs https://gyazo.com/c611a4c9bc1d0d6bac5bea80ab278afa

 - At ground level on my plot (at my shop) I'm getting 40 fps (no one in sim), at my platform i'm getting around 85. That's fine enough I guess (I'm used to getting 150+ on old FS with shadows/ALM on - about 50+ at a busy club).

 - Colors look better, contrasts on my skins look more realistic, like I'm actually rendered in 3d without 3d glasses. Not that I was flat in the prev FS just look rounder (?), Water looks so dead tho, could just be the Midday setting I have it on. Clothing looks a tad better.

 - Problems - when I walk I notice lagging, or at least frame skipping, not quite like walking thru mud, just, jerky. Dancing seems fine...but then again I'm alone in the sky - 1500 m up). I DJ to about 15 ppl at the least and about 35 at the most and I don't know if it's going to be nice then.

 - It's still BRIGHT. Like playing Ghost Recon : Wildlands which I end up having a massive migraine to even with bloom and all that shut off. HELLDIVERS 2 is ok for me...but I too end up having a headache after about 2 or 3 games. I can feel the headache coming on after staring at my avatar dancing for the last 30 minutes. Particles are pretty though, also the Truth hair I have on, the textures look so nice, like almost real soft hair. https://gyazo.com/261b1eb8d5f1dc3d7cd6939db3dc0ded

All in all, it'll take a while for my eyes to get used to this I guess. The FPS drop and the jerky movement when I walk might be something that drives me back to the prev FS until all the kinks get optimized. Also being in a crowded club might lower that FPS even lower and THAT will def make me go back to the old FS...I LIKE seeing everyone's outfits!

 

EDIT: TPing makes me lose my body/head/clothes...tp'd three times, finally got my ehad back but bodya nd clothes were gone - funnily enough my shoes and hair stayed on...funny to me as I've been here long enough to remember TPing sent shoes and hair up your butt

 

Edited June 24 by SylviElle Zaftig

[shireena1]

5 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I feel like this has been asked a zillion times but I can't find the answers because there's been so many threads. I have my parcel set to region settings and it's making a lot of greenery and other things look fairly dark. I think i need to adjust the contrast in the region settings? Which would be where?

 

Dunno how to fix your settings, but i would love to have your group tag . can you see me an invite if it is a free group?

[Nalates Urriah]

I used to do viewer reviews and dig into the details. These days I am busy playing not reviewing viewers. But I have done a comparative test of performance. Basically how well does my computer run this version versus the previous version. The tests are on my blog going back years. They are not intended to be objective detailed tests. I all I care about is whether this version is faster or slower.

I stand on my front porch in Bellisseria and set DD to 512 and 128m. Let things tender and record the FPS. So with an i5-6600K # 4.2 mhz and an NVIDIA 1060 I find this version 7 a bit faster than the v6. Nice.

5 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I feel like this has been asked a zillion times but I can't find the answers because there's been so many threads. I have my parcel set to region settings and it's making a lot of greenery and other things look fairly dark. I think i need to adjust the contrast in the region settings? Which would be where?

There are various ways to solve the problem. A couple of ways not mentioned yet, one can tweak the ambient lighting and the gamma.

4 hours ago, Siyun Jeon said:

Frankly, I'm getting nuts right now on my not-so-new machine and can't really see why. I have an i7-6700 at 4 GHz, 32 Gig Ram, and two GTX 1080 (of which of course mostly one is used by modern or not so modern games). I get yucky CPU (not GPU) spikes every 6 seconds, where the otherwise 30-40% CPU time goes up to 100 for half a second, and back down. That of course drives my fan up to max for a second or two, and in turn drives me crazy. 

I've limited frame rate to 20, 64m radius, no shadows, no screen reflections. Doesn't make a difference, so I doubt it's even the graphics that are driving this, but something else is happening on the CPU with that update. Unfortunately I don't have a clue what yet.

Best

Siyun

Those periodic spikes are likely a Windows OS thing. You can often fix the problem by opening a Command Line window (type CMD in Win search and run as Admin. Then run SFC /SCANNOW. If there are problems that usually fixes them. At the end of the run it will tell you whether it had to fix anything.

Be sure you run the Windows update.

While debugging and looking for the problem make sure the viewer is the only thing running. Open the Task Manager and the Resource Monitor to watch what the computer is doing. Neither of those will add a cyclic load. So the 6 sec spike should show.

If memory is faulting (swapping active memory to disk) you'll see it in the Resource Monitor in Memory. Ideally the number is 0. If not, you'll be able to see what is forcing the Fault/swap. Then that task has to be disabled. These faults happen when a program runs out of available active memory. With 32GB that should not happen. If you have lots of apps open and tabs in browsers.... it might.

Also Win 10 and 11 suck for the first 10 to fifteen minutes after boot. So troubleshoot after the computer has been up for awhile.

 

[shireena1]

I have used fs7 for a bit now, don't really love it or hate it really, one or two things i have noticed, i have to run it with mirrors off, that kills the frame rate, (by about 40 fps lol), running multiple avs on anything but a quiet sim kills any framerate, textures can be slow to load on my old pc, quicker on the newer one, and now i get told there will, at least temporarily, no voice or music streaming on fs7.  The strange thing is, I can run an avi on my 12 year old 3rd gen intel as well as my newer pc. Maybe the viewer just needs optimising  perhaps? I'm not one to say i am not at all in a position to say that, as i am not at all techy like that.

Overall however, if this is the way it is heading, i just have to embrace it, and use  something like speedlight for multiple avies now.

I sorta feel sad for peeps that have sinking boats now lol .

[NaomiLocket]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:05 PM, brodiac90 said:

latest drivers yes, and I tried turning off VSynch and limiting frame rate that way and saw marginal improvement. 

Checking back in with you for a bit. I have some more questions.

Are you using various other applications on the side - that the entire crowd of "games do this" seem to have forgotten about. Such as the web browser, spotify, steam, or any other by default hardware accelerated (gpu)?

I am assuming from your posted stats that you are using a single display device desktop PC.

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

Sadly it's more costly than ray tracing in the triple eh gaming space.

Good for photos but we'll all be turning it off in public.

[rasterscan]

New to firestorms PBR release ? So was I. Golden Tip ahead. First use, if the graphics or brightness freak you. Goto World> Enviroment > and click Midday. Everything slots into place graphically really nice. Now its easier to play with favourite EEP's, windlights, etc. Thanks to hammies for this great tip